The Phantom of Ammonius (Misinformation about Mark 16:9-20)

Who was Ammonius and what did he write about Mark 16:9-20?

 Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria (175-242) was a philosopher.  He might possibly have been (like, it’s remotely possibly conceivable) the Ammonius I am about to discuss. But Ammonius of Alexandria is probably not Ammonius Saccas.  Our Ammonius is an individual mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea in his brief letter Ad Carpianus.

 So let’s ask another question:  What is Eusebius’ letter to Carpian about, and what does he say about Ammonius?

Ad Carpianus (or, To Carpian) is a brief instruction-manual about how to use the Eusebian Canons – Eusebius’ cross-reference system for the Gospels.  To Carpian is featured near the beginning of many Greek Gospels-manuscripts, and is still reproduced on pages  84*-85* of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graecae (27th ed.).   Ammonius is mentioned at the outset.   

           Using Mark DelCogliano’s translation of Eusebius’ letter (which is in the public domain (thanks, Mark!)) as the basis for the following (with minimal adjustments) we may see the relevant portion in English: 

            “Eusebius to Carpianus his beloved brother in the Lord:  greetings.

Ammonius the Alexandrian, having exerted a great deal of energy and effort as was necessary, bequeaths to us a harmonized account of the four gospels.  Alongside the Gospel according to Matthew, he placed the corresponding sections of the other gospels.
          But this had the inevitable result of ruining the sequential order of the other three gospels, as far as a continuous reading of the text was concerned.  Keeping, however, both the body and sequence of the other gospels completely intact – in order that you may be able to know where each evangelist wrote passages in which they were led by love of truth to speak about the same things – I drew up a total of ten tables according to another system, acquiring the raw data from the work of the man mentioned above. These tables are set out for you below.”

           Eusebius proceeded to describe his own cross-reference system, in which Eusebius divided the text of the four Gospels into sections, and each section was assigned a number, and each number was arranged in ten lists.  But today we are not concerned with the testimony of Eusebius; I am looking at the testimony of Ammmonius.  (Those who wish to learn more about Eusebius’ Gospels-cross-reference system are welcome to watch my video about the Eusebian Canons which I made several years ago.)

          What Eusebius says about Ammonius’ attempt to harmonize the Gospels is enough to demonstrate that Ammonius’ material is not represented by Eusebius’ Section-divisions.  This was demonstrated by John Burgon in 1871 in his book The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated.  Burgon observed that Ammonius’ Matthew-centered cross-reference system would not be capable of featuring passages in Mark, Luke, and John for which there is no parallel section in Matthew.  Referring to those sections, Burgon wrote, “Those 225 Sections can have found no place in the work of Ammonius. And if (in some unexplained way) room was found for those parts of the Gospels, with what possible motive can Ammonius have sub-divided them into exactly 225 portions? It is nothing else but irrational to assume that he did so.”  (See pages 295 to 312 (Appendix G), especially page 302, of John Burgon’s 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to Saint Mark Vindicated Against Recent Critical Objectors.)        

Bruce Metzger, I try to take it easy on
you, since you're dead, but ...   
did you expect this to just slide by?

          Nevertheless, Bruce Metzger, in his highly influential handbook The Text of the New Testament, (in the third edition, 1992) on page 226, as he commented on this passage, Metzger wrote, “Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Ammonius show no knowledge of these verses.” The same sentence appears in the fourth edition (2005), co-edited by Bart Ehrman, on p. 322.

          (This particular sentence constituted a departure from how Metzger had previously described the evidence in 1964; for details see the 1:50-mark in the three-minute video Mark 16:9-20 and The Parrot Problem.)

          Also, in his influential A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Metzger wrote, “The original form of the Eusebian sections (drawn up by Ammonius) makes no provision for numbering sections of the text after 16.8.”

          Metzger was writing as if he had access to something to which he had no access.  While it would be correct to state that the original form of the Eusebian sections did not make any provision for numbering sections of Mark 16:9-20, it is incorrect to say that the original form of the Eusebian sections were “drawn up by Ammonius.”

          The Eusebian Sections include, in Canons (i.e., Tables) Eight, Nine, and part of Ten, sections which are not paralleled in Matthew and thus would have had no place in Ammonius’ cross-reference system.

          Ammonius cannot be considered a valid witness for the inclusion or non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20. We simply do not have any data from Ammonius one way or the other regarding this.  Ammonius is a phantom witness – contrary to the Bruce Metzger, and contrary to the textual apparatus of the first, second, and third editions of the UBS GNT.  If you own a commentary that spreads Metzger’s and Ehrman’s falsehood about Ammonius, I recommend that you add, in the margin, in ink, “This claim about Ammonius is false.”        




[Readers are encouraged to test the data in this post and are invited to explore the embedded links.]

 

Fact-checking Wallace: GA 138

            “Second, the scribe might simply place an asterisk or obelisk in the margin, indicating doubt about these verses.  Such a symbol is found in at least five manuscripts.”  So goes a claim made by Daniel Wallace in his chapter of Perspectives on the Ending of Mark:  4 Views.  Wallace was describing two ways in which “some doubts about the authenticity of the LE” [“LE” meaning Mark 16:9-20, the Longer Ending] are indicated by copyists – the first way being the inclusion of a note.  

            Wallace’s statement runs parallel to a claim popularized by the late Bruce Metzger in his A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament:  “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that the older Greek copies lack it, and in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document.”

            Metzger’s vagueness is remarkably unhelpful; the members of the jury are left to wonder about how many manuscripts constitute “not a few,” and the little detail about the identity of those “other witnesses” – manuscripts without notes, but with asterisks or obeli – is not provided.

            Dr. Wallace, however, gave specifics:  in a footnote, Wallace listed the five manuscripts to which he referred:  “MSS 138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812, listed on 407 in Markusevangelium, ANTF 27.  Parker, Living Text, 127, adds 137 to this list.”

            With the addition of minuscule 137, the list of manuscripts which are claimed to have a simple asterisk accompanying Mark 16:9-20 to express scribal doubt about the passage reaches a total of six.  Page-views of all six of these manuscripts are online.  Let’s have a look!  Today we will consider the first manuscript in the list, GA 138.

Use this embedded link
to see the page-view with
Mark 16:9 in GA 138
at the Vatican Library.

            GA 138 is at the Vatican Library, catalogued as Vat. Gr. 757.  It is a commentary-manuscript in which the text is written segment by segment, with the commentary interspersed between segments of text.  The text of chapter 16 of Mark begins on page-view 156, where 16:1-5 is presented as a segment of text (accompanied in the margin by diple-marks), identified in the margin as section #231.  (These sections are the Eusebian Sections, used in the Eusebian Canons.)  It is followed by commentary.  On the next page, after the rest of the commentary on 16:1-5, the text of 16:6-8 is presented (accompanied in the margin by diple-marks, and identified as sections #232 and #233).  This, too, is followed by commentary (some of which is based on Eusebius’ comments in Ad Marinum). 

            On the next page, as the commentary continues, the left margin of the writing is disrupted, but no text is lost; it appears that the copyist was avoiding a flaw in the parchment.  On the ninth line, the text of Mark 16:9 begins.  In the outer left margin there is a single asterisk, and diple-marks accompany the text of Mark 16:9-14. 

            After 16:14, the commentary continues, and when one examines the last five lines of the commentary on Mark 16:9-14, one finds the portion of the Catena in Marcum (a commentary, much of which consists of a compilation of extracts from various authors such as Origen and Chrysostom, attributed to Victor of Antioch) in which the commentator responds to a claim which was mentioned (but not approved) by Eusebius of Caesarea in his composition Ad Marinum, to the effect that verses 9-20 are not often encountered.  The commentator’s note begins in Greek with the words Παρὰ πλείστοις ἀντιγράφοις οὐ κεῖται: 

“In many copies, the rest does not appear there in the Gospel of Mark, for certain persons have thought it to be spurious.” [Or perhaps this last phrase means, “and because of this, certain persons have thought it to be spurious.”] “But we, from accurate copies – having found it in many of them, corresponding to the Palestinian Gospel of Mark  – have, as truthfulness requires, also included the account of the resurrection of the Master, after ‘for they were afraid.’”  

            (If one were to take in hand John Burgon’s 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated, and turn to Appendix E, one would find this entire note, in Greek, with an apparatus indicating textual variations extracted from an assortment of manuscripts that contain the Catena in Marcum.)               

            After that, the text of Mark 16:15-18a (θανάσιμόν τι) completes the rest of the page.  On the next page, Mark 16:18b-20 is written (with diple-marks in the margin), followed by commentary.

            Plainly, GA 138 does not have “a simple asterisk.”  GA 138 contains the Catena in Marcum, including the note that affirms the presence of Mark 16:9-20 in many copies and in a Palestinian manuscript of Mark that was considered particularly accurate.  The asterisk in the margin alongside the beginning of Mark 16:9-20 is a side-effect of the non-inclusion of the passage in the Eusebian Canons; it does not express scribal doubt; it denotes the beginning of the section for which there was no Section-number.           

            Next:  Fact-checking Wallace about GA 264 and 1221.

____________

Quotations from Perspectives on the Ending of Mark: 4 Views © 2008 Broadman & Holman Publishers, All rights reserved.

A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament is © 1971 by the United Bible Societies.  All rights reserved.

The Text of Reasoned Eclecticism: Is It Reasonable and Eclectic? Part Three of a Four-Part Response to Dan Wallace

Internal Evidence

            I now turn to Wallace’s comments sub-titled Internal Evidence.  In this section, Wallace tends to misrepresent the Byzantine Priority position as it is currently framed by its chief advocate, Maurice Robinson.  Wallace cited Michael Holmes to support the idea that majority-text advocates “object quite strenuously to the use of the canons of internal evidence.”  Meanwhile in the real world, Robinson candidly affirms in The Case for Byzantine Priority:  “The basic principles of internal and external evidence utilized by Byzantine-priority advocates are quite familiar to those who practice either rigorous or reasoned eclecticism.”  Robinson proceeds to list and describe eight principles of internal evidence!²³ 

            As much as Wallace might wish that Byzantine-priority advocates disregard internal evidence, that is simply not true.  Rather, Byzantine-priority advocates (and other textual critics with a dislike of propaganda disguised as textual commentary) object to inconsistent applications of internal evidence which are primarily steered, not by the internal evidence as it exists for specific variant-units, but by a model of transmission-history that precludes, or sets ridiculously high hurdles against, the authenticity of Byzantine readings.  In other words, textual critics who believe, as Wallace appears to believe, that the Byzantine Text did not exist until after 300, will approach the internal evidence accordingly, and will consider the most crucial internal aspects of the evidence to be whatever results in the rejection of the Byzantine reading.

            Wallace invited readers to consult Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament to see how internal evidence was used in the United Bible Societies’ compilation-committee decisions to accept one reading over another – especially when the adopted reading was given an “A” rank, which means that the compilers regarded the adopted text as “virtually certain.”²⁴   With apologies for lengthening this composition – Invitation accepted.  Let’s consider four “A” readings from the Gospel of Mark.  (These are not the best examples of the extreme lengths to which the UBS compilers have taken internal evidence as a means to reject Byzantine readings, but as a response to the invitation to use only A-ranked readings, they will have to do.)

Mk 1:14 – Against evidence from the Byzantine Text, the Vulgate, the Gothic version, the Peshitta, and codices D and W (among others – see the textual apparatus for further details) that supports the inclusion of της βασιλείας, Metzger argued for the Alexandrian non-inclusion of the phrase.  The longer reading, he claimed, “was obviously made by copyists in order to bring the unusual Markan phrase into conformity with the much more frequently used expression “the kingdom of God” (cf. ver. 15).”  On the other hand, however, it could be argued from internal evidence that the longer reading is more consistent with Markan style, because nowhere else in Mark does the phrase “gospel of God” appear.  Metzger’s idea requires that somewhere in the ancestry of diverse witnesses such as D, W, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate, they were all influenced by some copyist’s intentional insertion – whereas all that is required to produce the shorter reading is an accidental error that resulted when copyists’ line of sight drifted from the τ in της to the τ in του.

Mk 1:34 – Agreeing with external evidence from the Byzantine Text, the Vulgate, the Old Latin copies, the Gothic version, and the Peshitta, Metzger conceded that the longer reading in the Alexandrian text (Χριστον ειναι, read by Codex Vaticanus, L, and f¹) was an addition, by which copyists harmonized the text in Mark to the text in Luke 4:41.  There would be no reason for copyists to omit the phrase, if it had been present originally, but it would be a natural expansion.

Mk. 7:4 – Agreeing with external evidence from the Byzantine Text, the Vulgate, D, the Old Latins, the Peshitta, the Gothic version, and Origen, Metzger conceded that the Alexandrian reading ραντισωνται (supported by B, À, and the Coptic version) was an alteration introduced by Alexandrian copyists.  (This is given an “A” certainty-rank in UBS-2, but in Metzger’s Textual Commentary it has a “B” rank.)

Mk. 9:29 – Against evidence from P⁴⁵, the Byzantine Text, codices A, D, W, L, f¹, the Old Latin copies, the Vulgate, the Peshitta, and almost everything else, Metzger argued that the shorter reading (supported only by À* B, 0274, one Old Latin copy (Bobbiensis), one Old Georgian copy, and Clement) was original, and that the phrase “and fasting” was the invention of copyists.  Apparently neither Metzger nor Wallace²⁵ could perceive that copyists were troubled by a reading which could be interpreted to suggest that Jesus could not have cast out a particular kind of demon unless He had first fasted, even with the earliest (P⁴⁵) and most diverse evidence (from multiple locales) pointing the way.    

Mk. 11:26 – Against evidence from the Byzantine Text, almost all the Old Latin copies, the Vulgate, the Peshitta, and the Gothic version, Metzger rejected the inclusion of verse 26, supposing it to be an insertion based on Matthew 6:15, even though its correspondence to that verse is loose.  This is an instructive example of favoring external evidence over internal evidence, because Metzger noticed that it would have been very easy for copyists to skip verse 26 if their line of sight drifted from the words τα παραπτωματα υμων at the end of verse 25 to the exact same words at the end of verse 26, but did not consider this internal consideration to be persuasive against the Alexandrian witnesses.  Metzger argued that the shorter reading is in “early witnesses that represent all text-types,” although the same thing can be said about the longer reading, which is supported by Byzantine, Western, and Caesarean witnesses).      

These four samples indicate that internal evidence can be a very slippery thing, and that its force often depends upon the extent to which the textual critic is willing to engage his imagination to devise explanations for the origination of whatever reading is least consistent with his model of the text’s transmission-history.  Were we to explore Metzger’s Textual Commentary in detail, we would see that very frequently, the UBS compilation-committee attributed longer readings to scribal creativity where the shorter reading is attributable to scribal carelessness – especially when the shorter reading is Alexandrian.²⁶ 

Only when the Alexandrian reading is longer (as in Mark 1:34), or when the Alexandrian reading is so obviously secondary that no amount of ingenuity can plausibly salvage it (as in Mark 7:4), does internal evidence seem to have the ability to outweigh Alexandrian external evidence.  Metzger and his fellow UBS committee-members were not alone in their consideration of the length of rival variants as an internal consideration by which to judge between them:  the canon, “prefer the shorter reading” has been a major text-critical canon for a very long time, and in the late 1800’s and throughout the 1900’s, it was appealed to very frequently as a pivotal consideration, resulting in the rejection of very many longer Byzantine readings, in favor of shorter Alexandrian readings.  When the Byzantine Text has the shorter reading – as it does hundreds of times, for example in James 4:12 (“and Judge” is not in the Byzantine Text) and Jude v. 25 (“through Jesus Christ our Lord” is not in the Byzantine Text) – the compilers seem to have no problem recognizing parableptic errors, but when the Alexandrian Text has the shorter reading, the theory of first resort is that the longer reading originated with copyists.²⁷

Not only is this inconsistent, but it defies the analysis which James Royse provided of the text of some early New Testament papyri, showing that the copyists of those manuscripts tended to make more omissions than additions, at a proportion of three omissions for every two additions.²⁸  This tends to altogether invalidate the “prefer the shorter reading” canon, and indicates that every variant-unit that has been decided on the basis of that internal consideration ought to be revisited.

- Continued in Part Four - 

_______________

FOOTNOTES

23 – Of course Wallace could not anticipate, in the 1990’s, what Maurice Robinson would write in 2001.  But it is 2015 and Wallace’s article remains online, spreading false impressions about the nature of the view of the leading proponents of Byzantine Priority. 

24 – See page x of the introduction to the second edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament:  “The letter A signifies that the text is virtually certain.”

25 - See the NET’s note on this variant-unit:  “a good reason for the omission is difficult to find.”

26 – See Dennis Kenaga’s Skeptical Trends in New Testament Textual Criticism for additional critiques of inconsistencies in Metzger’s use of internal evidence. 

27 – The treatment of Matthew 12:47, which is absent in À and B and the Sahidic version (et al), is an outstanding example of pro-Alexandrian compilers’ reluctance to recognize parableptic omissions in the Alexandrian text.  Internal evidence has prevailed, but just barely.  Although the cause of a parableptic error is obvious – verses 46 and 47 end with the same word, λαλησαι – the UBS compilers assigned it a “C” rank (meaning that they harbor a “considerable degree of doubt” about the adopted text) and, echoing Nestle’s earlier treatment, bracketed the verse (to emphasize that the enclosed words have “dubious textual validity”).  

28 – See James R. Royse’s painstakingly prepared Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri, released in 2008.  

The ESV Study Bible and Mark 16:9-20

As a follow-up to the analysis of the shortcomings of Dr. Bruce Metzger’s comments about the external evidence about the ending of the Gospel of Mark, I have put together a review of some very similar statements about Mark 16:9-20 which are found in the ESV Study Bible. 

The author of the ESV Study Bible’s notes for the Gospel of Mark is listed at the ESV Study Bible's website as Dr. Hans Bayer, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary (near St. Louis, Missouri).  (Dr. Wayne Grudem is the General Editor.)  Covenant Theological Seminary is a Presbyterian school; its professors annually affirm the Westminster Confession, which includes a statement that the New Testament in Greek was “inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.”   However, inasmuch as the Greek text of the New Testament text used by the authors of the Westminster Confession is very different from the base-text of the ESV, it would seem that the purity to which this part of the Westminster Confession refers is being interpreted as basic doctrinal purity, not as textual purity. 

Now let’s consider Dr. Bayer’s note about Mark 16:9-20 in the ESV Study Bible, going point by point.  (The excerpts attributed to Dr. Bayer are from the English Standard Version Study Bible, © 2010 Crossway Bibles (a division of Good News Publishers), Wheaton.  Used for review purposes.  Excerpts from Dr. Bruce Metzger are from A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, © 1971 by the United Bible Societies, Stuttgart.)

Dr. Bayer:  “Some ancient manuscripts of Mark's Gospel contain these verses and others do not, which presents a puzzle for scholars who specialize in the history of such manuscripts.”

If “ancient” manuscripts are defined as manuscripts produced before the death of Charlemagne (in 814), then two ancient Greek manuscripts, one ancient Latin manuscript, one ancient Sahidic manuscript (the production-date of which is far from certain), and one ancient Syriac manuscript do not contain any part of Mark 16:9-20.  All other ancient copies of Mark 16, whether Greek or non-Greek, include at least part of this passage, showing that it was in those copies when they were in pristine condition.  

The two Greek manuscripts that lack Mark 16:9-20 (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) were both almost certainly produced at Caesarea in the 300s.  As I explained in the survey of Dr. Metzger’s comments, Codex Vaticanus has a distinct blank space after Mark 16:8, as if the copyist did not have access to an exemplar with the passage but nevertheless recollected it and attempted to reserve space for it.  And in Codex Sinaiticus, the text from Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 is written on replacement-pages; the copyist who made those four pages drastically shifted his rate of letters per columns in order to avoid having a blank column between the end of Mark and the beginning of Luke.  This indicates that the copyists of the only two Greek manuscripts in which Mark ends at 16:8 knew of at least one manuscript, older than the ones they were making, in which the passage was included.

Dr. Bayer:  “This longer ending is missing from various old and reliable Greek manuscripts (esp. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), as well as numerous early Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian manuscripts.”

Dr. Bayer’s dependence upon Dr. Metzger is obvious as he describes these pieces of evidence in exactly the same order in which Dr. Metzger described them.  Dr. Bayer, however, has provided his readers with an even more distant and out-of-focus perspective than Dr. Metzger did, with the result that his readers have been given a false impression of the scope of the evidence.  The two Greek manuscripts that Dr. Bayer names (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) are the only ancient Greek manuscripts of Mark 16 in which the text stops at verse 8.  Now imagine if someone told you, “Various houses in this town are made of brick, especially the homes of Mr. Andrews and Mr. Baker” – and then you found out that the homes of Mr. Andrews and Mr. Baker were the only brick houses in the village.  Would you not feel rather misled?  

The “numerous” Latin manuscripts to which Dr. Bayer refers consist of one copy:  Codex Bobbiensis, which has an anomalous text throughout Mark 16 (regarding which see the pertinent part of the earlier article about Dr. Metzger’s comments.)  The “numerous” Syriac manuscripts to which Dr. Bayer refers consist of one copy:  the Sinaitic Syriac, which shares other unusual readings with Codex Bobbiensis.  The Armenian manuscripts to which he refers are really numerous, but they are medieval; they are not early.  Neither are the two Georgian manuscripts to which he refers. 

Dr. Bayer:  “Early church fathers (e.g. Origen and Clement of Alexandria) did not appear to know of these verses.”

This appears to be a paraphrase of Dr. Metzger’s claim that “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.”   Clement hardly quoted from the Gospel of Mark at all, except for one large citation from chapter 10.  Origen, likewise, did not use the Gospel of Mark very much.  See my analysis of Dr. Metzger’s statement for further details.  Also notice that farther along in the same footnote, Dr. Bayer says that many church fathers knew the passage. 

Dr. Bayer:  “Eusebius and Jerome state that this section is missing in most manuscripts available at their time.”

This appears to be another echo of Dr. Metzger’s comments.  The pertinent statement from Eusebius is embedded in his composition Ad Marinum, in which Eusebius, in the course of answering a question about how to resolve a perceived discrepancy between Matthew 28 and Mark 16 regarding the timing of Christ’s resurrection, stated that a person could say that verses 9-20 are not in every single manuscript, or that they are absent from the accurate ones, or from almost all manuscripts.  But after framing all that as something that a person might say, Eusebius proceeded to describe, in considerable detail, how Mark 16:9 could be harmonized  with Matthew 28:1 (and thus retained).  He seems to expect Marinus to take this second approach.  In the course of answering the next question, Eusebius states that “some copies” of Mark mention that Jesus cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene (a detail stated in Mark only in 16:9), and in his answer to the question after that one, he affirms that the Mary who stands at the tomb in John 20 is the same individual “from whom, according to Mark, He had cast out seven demons.” 

Although one might imagine, based on Dr. Bayer’s vague description of Jerome’s testimony, that Jerome reported the results of his own investigation into how his manuscripts of Mark ended, what we really have in Jerome’s Ad Hedibiam (Epistle 120) is a condensed translation of Eusebius' Ad Marinum.  The third, fourth, and fifth questions in Jerome’s letter to Hedibia are the same as the first, second, and third questions in Eusebius’ letter to Marinus, and Jerome’s answers are based mainly on the answered that Eusebius had supplied.  This is not an independent statement by Jerome; he would not have made this statement if he had not been translating Eusebius’ earlier composition.  Jerome included verses 9-20 in the Vulgate (in 383), and referred to 16:14 in Against the Pelagians when explaining where he had seen the interpolation now known as the Freer Logion.

Dr. Bayer:  “And some manuscripts that contain vv. 9-20 indicate that older manuscripts lack the section.”

Again, this resembles Dr. Metzger’s statement:  “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it.”  As I have explained elsewhere, this refers to 14 manuscripts (out of over 1,700) which have special annotations about Mark 16:9-20.  The annotations tend to express support for the passage.  In one form (shared by ten manuscripts), the annotation states that although some copies lack the verses, most copies include them, and in another form (shared by three manuscripts), the annotation states that although some copies lack the passage, the ancient copies include it all.  That is the opposite of the impression given by the ESV Study Bible’s note.

Dr. Bayer:  “On the other hand, some early and many later manuscripts (such as the manuscripts known as A, C, and D) contain vv. 9-20, and many church fathers (such as Irenaeus) evidently knew of these verses.”

Dr. Bayer specifically named the two Greek manuscripts in which the text of Mark stops at 16:8, and he reached into the 900s to find versional evidence for that form of the text.  But here as he describes the patristic evidence, he supplied only one specific name.  That is not even-handed treatment of the evidence.  The “many church fathers” to whom Dr. Bayer refers includes the following:  Justin (c. 160), Tatian (c. 172), Irenaeus (c. 184), Epistula Apostolorum (probably; 150-180),Tertullian (probably; 190-205), Hippolytus (c. 220), Vincentius of Thibaris (257), De Rebaptismate (258), Porphyry/Hierocles (anti-Christian writers from 270/303), Acts of Pilate (300s), Marinus (c. 330), Aphraates (335), Wulfilas (c. 350), Ephrem Syrus (c. 360), Ambrose (370’s or 380’s), Philostorgius (c. 380), Epiphanius (c. 385), Old Latin capitula (pre-380’s), the Peshitta (mid-late 300s), Chromatius (c. 380), Apostolic Constitutions (380), De Trinitate (380’s, attributed to Didymus the Blind), Jerome (383), John Chrysostom (probably, c. 407), the author of the Freer Logion (pre-400), Augustine (400), Greek manuscripts cited by Augustine (400), the lectionary-system used by Augustine (early 400s), Macarius Magnes (405), Doctrine of Addai (early 400s; probably a composite of earlier material), Pelagius (c. 410), Patrick (mid-400s), Nestorius (c. 430), Marcus Eremita (435), Peter Chrysologus (453), Eznik of Golb (c. 440), and Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 450).  If the list of patristic writings and manuscripts were extended to the production-date of the Armenian copies that Dr. Bayer described as “early,” it would be increased by dozens and dozens.

Dr. Bayer:  “As for the verses themselves, they contain various Greek words and expressions uncommon to Mark, and there are stylistic differences as well.”

Granting that Mark 16:9-20 contains some stylistic differences from the preceding section, Dr. Bayer’s point about the presence of Greek words “uncommon to Mark” is nullified by the presence of even more Greek words “uncommon to Mark” – that is, used only once in the Gospel of Mark – in another 12-verse section (15:40-16:4), as Dr. Bruce Terry shows in an essay at http://web.ovc.edu/terry/articles/mkendsty.htm .

In addition, the ESV – in a copy that I saw with a 2007 copyright by Crossway – has the following footnote:  “Some manuscripts end the book with 16:8; others include verses 9-20 immediately after verse 8.  A few manuscripts insert additional material after verse 14; one Latin manuscript adds after verse 8 the following:  But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told. And after this, Jesus himself sent out by means of them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Other manuscripts include this same wording after verse 8, then continue with verses 9-20."

That footnote is extremely imprecise.  Written accurately, it would go like this:  “Over 1,700 Greek manuscripts include verses 9-20 immediately after verse 8.  Two Greek manuscripts end the book with 16:8; one of them has a prolonged blank space after verse 8.  One manuscript inserts additional material between verse 14 and verse 15.  One Latin manuscript interpolates an ascension-scene between 16:3 and 16:4, removes part of verse 8, and then adds the following:  But they reported briefly to a boy and those with him all that they had been told.  And after this, Jesus appeared and sent out by means of them, from east to east, the sacred and imperishable [proclamation] of eternal salvation, Amen.  Five Greek manuscripts (and versional evidence from Egypt) include similar wording between verse 8 and verse 9; one medieval Greek manuscript has this ending in the margin.

How long will the editors of the ESV and the ESV Study Bible allow their readers to be misled by these inaccurate and misleading notes?     

Mark 16, Bruce Metzger, and Misinformation

          Very many commentators, when considering Mark 16:9-20, have not investigated the subject directly.  Instead, they have relied upon the late Dr. Bruce Metzger’s handbooks A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament and The Text of the New Testament.  Unfortunately many of Dr. Metzger’s statements about the external evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20 are incomplete, inaccurate, or incorrect, and convey false impressions.  To cast some light on all this, I have prepared this point-by-point review of Dr. Metzger’s statements, as found in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament.

          (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce M. Metzger is © 1971 by the United Bible Societies, Stuttgart.  Used here for review purposes.)

Metzger: “The last 12 verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts” –

           This refers to the oldest two manuscripts that contain Mark 16:  Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, from the 300’s. (Papyrus 45 is the oldest catalogued manuscript of Mark (although an older fragment containing text from Mark will probably be catalogued before 2014, God willing), but due to damage, Papyrus 45 contains no text of Mark 16 at all.)
          In Codex Vaticanus, the end of Mark is formatted differently from the ends of the other New Testament books.  Usually, after the copyist who wrote the New Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus reached the end of a book, he began the next book at the top of the very next column.  But after Mark 16:8, there’s the closing-title of the Gospel of Mark, and the rest of the column is blank (which is not unusual) and the next column is also blank.  It is as if the copyist was using an exemplar in which Mark’s text stopped at 16:8, but he recollected the remaining verses, and attempted to leave space for them in the event that the eventual owner or user of the codex wanted to include them.
          In Codex Sinaiticus, there are two unusual features that involve the end of the Gospel of Mark.  First, the pages in Codex Sinaiticus which contain Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 are replacement-pages; the text on these four pages was not written by the copyist who produced the surrounding pages.  The person who wrote the text on these replacement-pages adjusted his lettering so that Luke 1:1-56 would fit into six columns and so that Mark 14:54-16:8 would occupy ten columns with no blank column in between (instead of nine columns plus a blank column).  Second, there is an elaborate decorative design in Codex Sinaiticus after Mark 16:8; if one compares this decorative design to the other decorative designs at the ends of books transcribed by the same copyist, it’s clear that the decorative design after Mark 16:8 is uniquely emphatic.

Metzger: “from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis” –

          This particular Old Latin codex was made in Egypt by a copyist who was not very familiar with the contents of the Gospels.  Codex Bobbiensis (the name can be spelled both ways) has a very anomalous text of Mark 16.  In the Shorter Ending, the copyist wrote the Latin for “child” (puero) instead of Peter’s name (Petro); instead of writing “from east to west,” he wrote “from east to east,” and he skipped the Latin word for “proclaim” (praedicationis, which was then placed in the lower margin of the page).  Contrary to the impression given by the ESV’s footnotes, Codex Bobbiensis says that Jesus appeared to the disciples before He sent out the gospel through them. 
          In Codex Bobbiensis, the names of the women are removed from verse 1, and an interpolation has been added between verse 3 and verse 4, stating that angels descended to the tomb, and that Christ gloriously arose, and they ascended with him.  Also, in verse 8, the phrase stating that the women said nothing to anyone has been removed.  To sum up:  the aberrations in Mark 16 in Codex Bobbiensis are not merely the effects of incompetent copying; some of them are clearly the results of conscious editorial tampering.  The text of Mark 16 in Codex Bobbiensis is not a reliable text. 

Metzger: “the Sinaitic Syriac” –

          This is the only known Syriac copy of Mark in which chapter 16 ends at verse 8. It shares several unusual readings with Codex Bobbiensis (notably at Matthew 1:25, 4:17, 5:47, 8:12, and Mark 8:31-32), indicating that they both descend from the same transmission-stream.
Metzger: “About 100 Armenian manuscripts” –
          The Armenian copies to which Dr. Metzger refers were listed by E. C. Colwell in a 1937 article; many more Armenian copies have been discovered since then.  The history of the transmission of the Gospels-text in Armenian is still a matter of debate.  But a few things should be added to Dr. Metzger’s lonely citation.  
          First, the Armenian manuscripts to which he refers are not particularly early; they are all medieval. Second, there are hundreds of other Armenian manuscripts that include Mark 16:9-20.  Third, one of the oldest Armenian manuscripts, Matenadaran 2374 (which used to be called Etchmiadzin 229), which was produced in 989, includes Mark 16:9-20.  Fourth, long before the production-date of any of the extant manuscripts, the Armenian writer Eznik of Golb used the contents of Mark 16:17-18 in his composition De Deo (also called Against the Sects) around 440.  And, fifth, according to Armenian historians, the Armenian Version was initially produced around 410, but was extensively revised in the 430’s after cherished Greek copies were taken to Armenia from Constantinople.  Now although the history of the Armenian Gospels-text is not altogether clear, it looks like there are two ancient Armenian transmission-streams that both go all the way back to the 400’s; one contained Mark 16:9-20 and the other did not.  Those “about one hundred Armenian manuscripts” are about 100 echoes of one early Armenian transmission-stream.
Metzger: “And the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913).” –  
          Those two Old Georgian copies should be understood as having no more weight than two more Armenian copies would, because the Old Georgian Version was translated from Armenian.  Many readers are likely to get the impression that the Armenian evidence and the Old Georgian evidence stand side by side as two independent lines of evidence, instead of seeing that the Old Georgian evidence mentioned by Dr. Metzger is an echo of the Armenian evidence.  In addition, Dr. Metzger did not mention Old Georgian copies that include Mark 16:9-20 which are only slightly younger than the two oldest Old Georgian copies. 

Metzger:  “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.” –  

          Clement of Alexandria hardly ever quotes from the Gospel of Mark, except for chapter 10.  His non-use of Mark 16:9-20 has no evidentiary force when one considers that he similarly does not use chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, and 15 of the Gospel of Mark.  It is senseless to deduce that Clement’s copies of Mark did not include ten chapters of Mark – but the same kind of groundless deduction is what Dr. Metzger’s statement induces uninformed readers to make about Mark 16:9-20.
          In addition, Dr. Metzger seems to have overlooked Clement’s comment on Jude verse 24 in Adumbrationes, where, according to Cassiodorus, Clement stated the following:  “In the Gospel according to Mark, when the Lord was asked by the chief priest if He was the Christ, the Son of the blessed God, said in reply, ‘I am, and you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power.’  Now this term ‘powers’ signifies the holy angels.  Further, when he says ‘at the right hand of God,’ He means the very same beings, who, because of their angelic holy powers and likeness, are called by the name of God.  He says, therefore, that He sits at the right hand, that is, He rests in pre-eminent honor.”
          Notice that Clement says that “He says, ‘at the right hand of God.’”  Who is the “he” to whom Clement refers?  It apparently cannot be Jesus, because Jesus never uses that phrase in the Gospel of Mark.  But if the “he” is, instead, Mark, then the reference must be to Mark 16:19.  The only way to avoid this conclusion, it seems, is to reckon that either Clement mixed up the sources of his citations, or that the text of Cassiodorus has been miscopied.
          Origen, like Clement, did not use the Gospel of Mark very much; his non-use of Mark 16:9-20 has no more implication about the contents of his copies of Mark than does his non-use of other large passages, including portions consisting of 54, 28, 41, 25, 39, 46, 63, 31, and 33 consecutive verses.  If it is granted that Origen’s non-use of such large portions of Mark does not imply their absence from his copies of Mark, then it should be obvious that nothing can be deduced from his non-use of a 12-verse passage.

Metzger:  “Furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them.” –   

          That is not what Eusebius and Jerome say.  Eusebius, in a response to a question about how to harmonize Matthew 28 and Mark 16 on the question of the timing of the resurrection, wrote that there are two ways to solve the perceived discrepancy.  Eusebius then framed those two options by saying that a person might say that the passage in Mark that says that Jesus arose early on the first day of the week should be rejected on the grounds that it is not in all the manuscripts, at least, the accurate manuscripts end after the statement that the women fled in silence because they were afraid; almost all the copies end there; the rest is in some copies but not in all of them.  That, Eusebius then wrote, is what someone might say to settle a superfluous question.
          But then Eusebius proceeded to present a second option:  someone else, not daring to set aside anything at all that appears in the Gospels, would insist that both statements (i.e., the one in Matthew 28:1 and the one in Mark 16:9) must be accepted, and that they each report one of two aspects of what they describe, and that both are advocated by the faithful and pious.  Therefore, since it is granted that this passage is true, it is appropriate to seek to fathom what it means.  And (he continued to write) if we accurately discern the sense of the words (in Mark 16:9) we won’t find it contrary to Matthew’s statement that the Savior was raised “Late on the Sabbath.”  For we shall read Mark’s statement, “And having risen early on the first day of the week” with a pause: after “And having risen,” we shall add a comma.  And we will separate the meaning of what follows, so, in the one case, we can read “Having risen” to correspond to Matthew’s “Late on the Sabbath,” for that is when he was raised, and, regarding the rest, we might join what follows with what is read next:  for “early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene.”
          Eusebius kept going, proceeding to advocate the second option, stating words to the following effect: John, at any rate, makes it clear in his account that the appearance to Mary Magdalene was early on the first day of the week.  So, likewise in Mark also he appeared early to her.  It is not that he rose early – for he rose much earlier, according to Matthew:  late on the Sabbath.  Having arisen at that time, he did not appear to Mary at that time, but “early.”  What is implied is that two episodes are represented by these phrases:  one is the time of the resurrection, late on the Sabbath.  The other is the time of the appearance of the Savior, which was early.  Mark referred to the later time when he wrote, saying what must be read [aloud] with a pause: “And having risen.”  Then, after adding a comma, one must read the rest: “Early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.”
          The brevity of Dr. Metzger’s description of the testimony from Eusebius prevents readers from seeing the context of Eusebius’ statement.  The part that says that almost all the manuscripts, at least the accurate ones, do not contain verses 9-20 is framed by Eusebius as something that someone could say to resolve the initial question.  Clearly Eusebius was aware of such copies, and he was aware that someone had advocated such a solution, and he thought it was worth mentioning to Marinus.  But Eusebius himself, when he wrote this composition to Marinus, did not consider that claim to be decisive, because after framing it as something that someone could say, he proceeded to tell Marinus that the passage should be retained, and that the harmonistic difficulty should be resolved by introducing a comma as one reads Mark 16:9.  If Eusebius himself had believed that only a smattering of copies contained Mark 16:9-20, and that the accurate copies did not contain Mark 16:9-20, it is difficult to explain why he would acquiesce to the inclusion of the passage, and describe Mark 16:9 as something written by Mark, and even recommend to Marinus that Mark 16:9 (and thus the rest of the passage, too) should be retained, provided that a pause be introduced when reading verse 9 aloud.
          In the course of answering Marinus’ next question, Eusebius referred to Mary Magdalene as the individual “of whom it is stated in Mark, according to some copies, that He had cast seven demons out of her.”  And, further along, answering Marinus’ third question, Eusebius stated that the individual named Mary who is mentioned in John is “the same one from whom, according to Mark, he had cast out seven demons.” 
          Eusebius seems to have held two opinions about this at two different times, for when he made his Canon-tables – a cross-reference system for the Gospels – he did not include Mark 16:9-20.  It looks like he must have rejected the passage at some point, but it is not clear if he rejected Mark 16:9-20 before, or after, he wrote to Marinus.  Whatever the case may be, Dr. Metzger’s brief description does not do justice to the testimony from Eusebius.  Readers who have only been allowed to peek at a snippet of Eusebius’ letter to Marinus have received an impression of Eusebius’ testimony that is very different from the one that one obtains from a full survey of his testimony.  (This situation has recently been remedied by the publication of the book Eusebius of Caesarea:  Gospel Problems and Solutions.) 
          The impression that Dr. Metzger gives about the testimony from Jerome is much more misleading.  The statement attributed to Jerome appears in a part of his Epistle 120 (To Hedibia) in which Jerome provides his own loose Latin abridgment of Eusbius’ letter to Marinus!  Jerome frequently borrowed material from earlier writers, without plainly stating that he was doing so.  That is what he did in this case; the third, fourth, and fifth Question-and-Answers in Jerome’s letter to Hedibia are based on the first, second, and third Question-and-Answers in Eusebius’ letter to Marinus.  In addition, Jerome, like Eusebius, recommended that Mark 16:9-20 be retained, and that a comma be used in verse 9.
          We should understand this reference in Jerome’s Epistle 120 as if Jerome had said, “Here’s what someone else has said about this question, and I passed it along as I composed a letter by dictation” not as if Jerome has said, “I have made a careful search of the manuscripts available to me, and here is what I have discovered.”  In 383, Jerome included Mark 16:9-20 in the Vulgate (which he states in his Preface that he made using old Greek copies), and in a composition he wrote around 414, Mark 16:14 is cited to show where the interpolation that is now known as the Freer Logion had been seen in Greek codices.
Metzger:  “The original form of the Eusebian sections (drawn up by Ammonius) makes no provision for numbering sections of the text after 16:8.” – 
          This comment reflects a misunderstanding of the Eusebian Sections.  In their earliest extant form, the Eusebian Sections include sections that are not in Matthew.  The non-extant cross-reference system that Ammonius developed, as described by Eusebius in Ad Carpianus (which served as a User’s Guide to the Eusebian Sections), was centered upon the Gospel of Matthew, and thus could not include sections to which there is no parallel in Matthew.  Ammonius’ non-extant cross-reference system inspired Eusebius to develop his own cross-reference system but the two things should not be confused.  Unfortunately that is exactly what Dr. Metzger has done, and many commentators who have repeated his claim have shown that they, too, have never really looked into the subject, and have never even consulted the analysis that John Burgon provided about it in Appendix G of his 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of Mark. (Burgon’s book can be downloaded for free online.)
Metzger: “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it” –
          Dr. Metzger’s vague description of “not a few” manuscripts refers to 14 manuscripts (which, considering that there are over 1,700 Greek copies of Mark, is relatively few).  The annotations in those 14 manuscripts are not the comments of 14 independent copyists; we are dealing here with essentially three notes.  One note is simple and short; it says at Mark 16:8, “In some of the copies this [i.e., verses 9-20] does not occur, but it stops here.”  One note says at 16:8, “In some of the copies, the Gospel comes to a close here, and so does Eusebius’ Canon-list.  But in many, this also appears.”  And another note says the same thing minus the part about the Eusebian Canons.  Another note, shared by a small group of manuscripts which also feature notes stating that they were compared to old copies at Jerusalem, says, “From here to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies.  But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact.”
          Dr. Metzger told his readers that the scribal notes state “that older Greek copies lack it.”   But when we examine the notes themselves, one form of the note says, “In the ancient copies it all appears intact.”  The note states the exact opposite of what a reader of Dr. Metzger’s note would naturally expect.  All of these notes, except for the first one I mentioned (which, for slightly complicated reasons, I consider to be just a brief version of the last one), tend to express support for the legitimacy of the passage.  Dr. Metzger’s description misleads his readers about the quantity of manuscripts with these notes, and about what is stated by the notes themselves.
Metzger: “in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document.” –          
          This statement from Dr. Metzger is not true.  Earlier researchers described various manuscripts inaccurately, “spot-checking” this particular part instead of surveying the entire manuscript, and symbols which actually represent the beginnings and ends of lections (that is, individual passages selected for public reading in the church-services) were misinterpreted as if they meant that there was some doubt about the passage.  (Dr. Metzger’s statements about asterisks and obeli have been distorted by many commentators, including Robert Stein and Craig A. Evans.)

          In addition to these misleading statements about the external evidence, Dr. Metzger misrepresented some aspects of the internal evidence, too.  For instance, he wrote, "θανάσιμον and τοις μετ’ αυτου γενομένοις, as designations of the disciples, occur only here in the New Testament."  Part of this statement simply does not make any sense, because θανάσιμον [thanasimon] is not a designation of the disciples; it is the word for “deadly thing” that appears in 16:18.  The weight of Dr. Metzger’s description of the vocabulary in Mark 16:9-20 as “non-Markan” is rather diminished by the observation (made by Dr. Bruce Terry) that the 12-verse passage consisting of Mark 15:40-16:4 contains more once-used words than 16:9-20.  

          These are not the only things that deserve clarification in Dr. Metzger’s comments, but this should prove, I think, that the descriptions of the external evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20 provided by Dr. Metzger (or by other commentators who have essentially borrowed and rephrased his descriptions) should not be used as the basis of text-critical decisions about Mark 16:9-20.